With playoff hopes less realistic than the boss doubling your salary ...

With Seneca Wallace and Jake Delhomme as likely to play as finding $1.19-a-gallon gas ...

The Browns might as well look at this as a lucky break.

Based on history, which says quarterbacks drafted in the third round almost never become winning long-term starters, there would have been a chance that Colt McCoy would have got lost.

If Wallace and Delhomme had stayed healthy for a couple of years — and if the Browns spent a top-10 2011 draft pick on a quarterback — McCoy might never have risen to see-the-field level for the length of his time on Lake Erie.

Now, it appears, he must play. Now, there’s at least a chance the little guy will reach deep inside to whatever reservoir made him a humongous winner in high school and college. Maybe he can pull out a big fat surprise at Pittsburgh.

NOTHING TO LOSE

What, really, would be lost in finding out?

If Wallace and Delhomme both have high ankle sprains, or worse, McCoy could get a few games of extended action. There is a risk he will get blown out of the water physically or mentally or both. Again, what is there to lose?

It’s not as if McCoy would be ill used. We’re certain he wants the ball.

If, somehow, McCoy looks good and wins games, he’ll open a window to a beautiful possibility:

He can be The Man. He can save the franchise from the terrible expense and anxiety of waiting out a quarterback drafted way up there.

At least they’ll get a taste. At least they’ll get to see.

And brother, does this team ever need a surprise draft hit to offset all the misses.

President Mike Holmgren brings impeccable insight to the McCoy issue.

He was a proud quarterback at USC who was an NFL rookie himself once. He had a front-row seat to Brett Favre’s first full year as a starter, when Favre was a 23-year-old, second-year pro with the Packers.

It was Holmgren’s idea to draft Matt Hasselbeck in the sixth round in 1998. While Hasselbeck didn’t play that year, he gave Holmgren another chance to gauge the readiness of a 23-year-old kid who — as things turned out — had the goods to become a playoff-style quarterback.

Holmgren has stayed in McCoy’s ear since drafting him and has as good a feel as anyone on earth for how to coach him up.

Holmgren himself said at the top that it would be far better for McCoy to sit and soak for a year than to hurry into the way of monstrous defensive ends such as John Abraham.

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Holmgren also said things could change, that injuries could happen. With injuries as the soup of the day in Berea, McCoy is the man of the hour.

Man or boy? C’mon. “The kid” is an old rookie. He turned 24 a week before the opener at Tampa Bay. He’s three years older than Joe Haden, who was allowed on the field for the touchdown pass that sent the Bucs past the Browns.

It’s different playing quarterback than cornerback, sure. Tim Couch, many argue, wound up on the road to ruin because he was asked to drive a bad car when he was too young.

It can even be argued that Bernie Kosar burned out too fast because he played too soon.

But what a ride Kosar gave the Browns before he crashed.

I doubt if McCoy wants to be the next Bernie Kosar. He couldn’t possibly understand. He was two days old when Kosar, at age 22, started the 1986 season opener, somehow scoring 31 points against the Bears’ vaunted defense.

McCoy was a twinkle in his daddy’s eye when Kosar began playing a year earlier. Kosar talks about what it was like. Maybe McCoy can draw something from it.

“I looked at it like this. I was 21,” Kosar said Monday during a swing through Canton. “It didn’t matter if you’re a rookie, didn’t get the reps during the week.

“When you’re out there, you have to get the job done. You have to figure out how to be productive and make plays. I just had that singular mindset that I was going to figure out how to make plays.

“I carried that through, whether it was drawing plays in the dirt, whether the game plan stunk and it seemed the plays were not gonna work. I was not going to go out there and run bad plays that were not going to be successful.”

“So, I mentally had to go after it with the plays so I could read defenses and get what they were trying to do. I was going to make sure we were in the right plays.”

Kosar would warn coaches or McCoy or anyone involved not to micromanage or be micromanaged. It kills him when he sees quarterbacks reading from scripts taped to their arms.

“I wanted to be in that huddle and to be able to tell those guys, because then they could see,” Kosar said. “If they knew that I knew, then they were going to believe in it.

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“I hate when they’re working with young quarterbacks, and the guy’s reading the wristband. It’s like giving a speech. ‘I’m going to read this to you.’

“In the huddle, I want to look at people and look ‘em in the eyes and see who’s into it, see who believes. I want them to look me back in the eyes and know that I’m ready to go, too.”

McCoy’s first game as a Brown would be Sunday against the Steelers.

Kosar’s fifth game as a pro was his first game at Pittsburgh. He dinked and dunked, completing 13 of 19 passes, and lost 10-9. It got worse a week later in a blowout at Cincinnati. It was his fourth straight loss.

The Browns won four of their next five, with Kosar sharing the quarterback job with Gary Danielson but taking most of the snaps.

How the Browns made the playoffs that year is a long story whose short version is Mack and Byner. Yet, it was the year the Browns found a franchise quarterback in a less-than-perfect body.

It can be supposed the Browns would not have reached three AFC championship games in the next four years if Kosar hadn’t played as a rookie.

It’s a longshot Colt McCoy can go anywhere near there.

Amid the garbage heap of a 1-4 start, however, it’s a lucky break that the team can at least test drive the dream.